From a pure measurement and analytic perspective these tools can certainly help people instantly measure their on-line popularity, engagement, and trust with their audience.

According to Klout, the most popular standard of measurement influence on-line, my score on Twitter is a respectable 54. They define me as a specialist. Klout states that I “may not be a celebrity, but within your area of expertise your opinion is second to none. Your content is likely focused around a specific topic or industry with a focused, highly engaged audience.”

Another one of my favorites is TweetLevel, a tool developed by an AR colleague of mine, Jonny Bentwood ( http://twitter.com/#!/JonnyBentwood). This beta tool helps “understand and quantify the varying importance of different people’s usage of Twitter.”

This leads me to my central question: do on-line influence and measurement tools singularly define your true influence on Twitter? Case in point: I have seen people amass thousands of friends on Facebook and connections on LinkedIn. Does this “social media collector” exercise make these types of people instant influential rock stars? Are they truly engaging with their social community to move their trust index up NOT just their popularity.

I’m here to state that to be truly influential in your social media community you need to arm yourself with an arsenal of techniques and engagement methods to connect and greatly effect your audience.

Here are some of the popular methods I use and recommend as ways to influence and connect with your audience:

1) Connect, connect, connect. Social media is just one technique to effect your audience and have them hang onto your every word. IRL or “In Real Life” conversations take your relationship with someone — be it personal or professional — to the next level. In my experience, people tend to hide behind a contrived persona on social media. IRL their true self comes out and your audience truly appreciates that.

In my job, which coincidentally is an influencer marketing role, I use a three-pronged method of influence — social media engagement, phone/E-mail engagement and IRL face-to-face conversations and interactions during road tours, trade shows, and on-site visits.

Why is this important? It helps me enhance my relationships with my community by developing a “deeper” level of trust, respect and friendship.

2) Listen, Listen and Listen Some More. How often do you find yourself “talking at” people on Twitter, LinkedIn, or some other social media channel? Everyone thinks their invincible on the Internet but nobody wants to engage with a super egomaniac. Nevertheless, you probably want to crow about your company’s success and accomplishments through the social media airwaves.

But do you go out of your way to publish or re-tweet a post from someone you are following on Twitter or a key connection on LinkedIn?

In my job, I’m constantly monitoring and listening to conversations to find out where the technology industry is going. More often than not, I influence key relationships by sending key contacts Twitter Direct Messages, then setting up phone and face-to-face meetings later on.

3) Don’t Try to Be Mr. or Mrs. Popular. Influence is NOT a popularity contest. You are not measured by the number of followers, friends and connections you have. Influence is the power of what you say and how you interact with your “engaged” audience.

Early on in the social media game I was constantly comparing myself to the celebrities, sports stars and social media advocates who attained a magical number of tens of thousands of followers. Like Klout said, I’m a specialist in my area and I know how to engage and target my audience with specific hot topics and content.

While I like sports and other hobbies, I’m not going engage my audience with nebulous tweets about these subject areas since I’m specifically not a specialist. I try to engage my audience on what I know well: social media, analyst relations, public relations, technology, and other marketing-related subjects.

4) Taking Things Personally Will Only Lessen Your Influence. I have noticed this trend in the social media world running rampant. For example, someone opens up a Facebook or Twitter account and comments and tweets to the world everything he or she is thinking. I have been guilty of this philosophy and mantra before. I used to think the more tweets I composed and sent and the number of times I commented on a Facebook post would spread my influence. Oh contraire! People want to engage with people who listen, who interact and don’t have a personal agenda at hand.

You may also be asking “how does influence on-the-job affect my company’s brand and image?” In my specific role of influencer marketing, I’m constantly listening to the opinions and suggestions of analysts and consultants. Sometimes this feedback is critical and sometimes it’s not music to my company’s ears.

Bottom line: I try to win friends and influence people by helping my internal stakeholders understand why a message and strategy may not be properly aligned to market conditions. And you know what? My external audience appreciates that their suggestions and opinions are considered and evaluated. This is key influencer relations from an inside/out perspective.

My colleague, Fred McClimans, and I hosted another stimulating discussion today on our Twitter #archat. #archat, for those of you reading this for the first time, is a Twitter conversation channel for analysts, media relations, analyst relations, investor relations, marketing, and other “influencer” business professionals interested in sharing best practices about the industry analyst community.

The consensus from the chat is that most AR pros agree that they need to work in collaboration with their product and marketing teams to test and validate their new solutions with “influential” analysts weeks and perhaps months ahead of time. The result: Your company can take this analyst feedback and fine-tune its strategy before it hits the market with the formal press release.

There’s also strong sentiment that the AR community should control which analysts are specifically targeted for messaging, strategy and consulting sessions. This makes logical sense since AR pros are more experienced in this area of the business.

To that end, message testing and validation is a true art because it allows the AR pro to truly maximize analysts’ thoughts, opinions and recommendations and feel like they are part of molding a company’s strategy.

My advice is to always target those analysts who you trust and will tell you the good, the bad and the ugly about your new product or strategy.

There were quite a few debates on today’s chat on whether these analysts are “friendly” or not. Does this really matter after all? One analyst quipped that “friendly” analysts are those who aren’t afraid to tell you that you are full of BS. That’s true but I personally think “friendly” is a misnomer.

An analyst, friend or foe, has a prime role and responsibility in telling a company how he/she feels about a product/solution during a message testing session. And this feedback is critical in helping a company re-mold its strategy before a major product or solution launch. One caveat expressed on this chat however: Many analysts expressed the opinion that “messaging” and “testing” are two separate initiatives that need to be part of a company’s overall analyst strategy.

One of my esteemed AR colleagues summed it up best by saying, “there are some analysts who can help build your messages, some that can tear them down, but both can make it better.”

In my experience, analysts like the message testing and validation process because they feel like they are helping a company make important decisions about its strategy and messaging. One analyst said: “Friendly analysts will deliver honest feedback and criticism–hopefully helping you to avoid problems later!”

Bottom line: If you tier, rank and prioritize your analysts based on this best practice, the message testing process is a ‘win-win’ for all involved — the analysts briefed on the strategy and the company’s marketing and product groups.

As most of you know, I strongly believe Twitter is one of the next big social media channels for creating buzz about hot topics.

Why many people (business and personal) still doubt the actual and relevant impact of social media, I believe conversations, dialogues, stories and relationships are built leveraging powerful social media dynamics.

As most of you know, I’m a big advocate of going “outside the box” and creating new relationships inside and outside the telecom, analyst relations and PR industries.

So I came up with an idea that was germinated from conversations I have a had with many PR professionals.

I started an analyst relations chat called #archat on Twitter with a friend of mine, Fred McClimans. This is a site for analyst relations, analysts and key influencers to come together to express their opinions about the way to improve the analyst ecosystem through best practice approaches, relationship-building techniques, corporate pitches, etc., etc.

Our Twitter chat community is growing into a “viral” dynamo with analysts, marketing, PR and AR professionals talking about it.

I hope to build similar communities like this on other social media sites, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Yammer over the next year.